Women in Saudi Arabia have been granted the right to drive, coming into effect this June. This is partly the result of a youngish prince wanting to take the kingdom in the 21st century, but also the result of the work of Saudi women activists who have risked much and stood bravely – over decades.

I listened to an interview recently with Medeha al-Ajroush talking about her involvement with this issue over 27 years. She talked about the first demonstration in 1990: when 47 women in 11 cars drove around and around in one of the main streets, waiting to be arrested.

She said “We decided that the one way of voicing our opinion, and being very present at a time of war would be through the symbol of a car. So we used the car because it’s not a paper or not a letter you could put or hide in a desk, but a car that is very visible in public areas and in the street...”

A visible symbol.Of courage, capability, determination, the right to transit.Resistance.

Mark Krasner on the site “The Authentic Gay” writing about attending his first ever Pride Parade in Upstate New York, says:

"… I remember thinking: this is awesome. Gorgeous men everywhere, drinking on the streets, DJ’s and dancing on every block… an absolutely beautiful day in Dolores Park on Saturday, and a terrifying, yet electric parade display down Market Street on Sunday. Never before had I been exposed to so much energy in one place before – so many beautiful shirtless men, non-stop partying, a celebration of life and being together. For the next several years, I didn’t think twice about associating the meaning of Gay Pride with one thing – party."

Then after the "2016 Presidential Election had concluded, LA Pride Parade organizers announced that the 2017 events would be replaced with a protest march. … It was at this moment that I finally came to learn the true meaning of gay pride. … It finally made sense to me – pride began as an expression of resistance, and as a fight for equality and recognition."

A visible symbol.Of a right to exist, to be recognised. Refusal to cower and be ashamed.Resistance.

Today, soon, you will be invited to receive an ash cross. This should be done on Ash Wednesday, but "better late than never" is my motto with most events in the church calendar.

Lent starts every year with Ash Wednesday. The palm crosses from the previous year's Palm Sunday are burnt, and the ash is mixed with a bit of oil and used to mark the sign of the cross onto us. (Our ash is from palm crosses seven or eight years ago – it's amazing how far a little bit of ash goes.) On Palm Sunday, just before Easter, the people welcome Jesus into town with cries of delight and celebration. Before long they are calling for his execution.

We make our ash from this turn.

In my experience it is always profound to be marked with an ash cross, told, "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." To see that cross on others, and to know they are seeing it on me. Disappointment and mistakes, lives that are battered and bruised, hopefulness mixed with failure – we wear our hearts on our sleeves, our truths on our foreheads. We don’t pretend we are with-it and winning – we admit that we are often unsure and fickle and needy.

It is also a symbol of resistance.Resistance to empires of power and prestige, success and slick answers, ego and self sufficiency.

Mark’s version of Jesus’ time in the wilderness is so sparse and stingy, that even with the addition of Jesus’ baptism and first sermon, it (probably) took more time for Meg to get to and from the lectern to than to read the text.

Matthew and Luke go into much more detail, and the years the lectionary assigns those accounts we don’t need to pad out Jesus’ wilderness time with the prior baptism or the post preaching.

But Mark is urgent, terse.

And Jesus declares: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news.”

This sounds like the kind of announcement you might make in light of an incredibly successful breakthrough, or an entire lifetime of slow but steady achievement.

Strange then to realise, that in this gospel Jesus had only one divine affirmation to go on, followed forty days of resistance. The details of devil badgering are unstated in Mark’s account. No conclusion that Jesus passed his test, triumphed over adversary – almost like time in the wilderness is the point, not the specifics or victor.

We know Satan was there, wild animals, angels. And we know none of these things are comfortable – not even angels. We may not know them by these labels, but we all know wilderness. Divorce, broken bones, trusted friends who rip us off, complex decisions with no right answer, hospice beds, hospital hallways. Pain and uncertainty, comfort that isn’t very comfortable.

When Jesus comes out of the wilderness, “after John was arrested” – no casual time reference, but a promise of danger that will stalk Jesus all the way to his own arrest – he dares to proclaim: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news.”

We are not presented with two perfectly formed possibilities, the wily empire of Satan and the glorious kingdom of heaven, laid out side by side so we can rationally pick between them. We have Jesus, dusty and hungry, asking us to follow our gut, into this rule of God that is yet to take shape. To come with him, to join our wilderness knowledge to his, to be formed by the gifts and struggles of that landscape, and then to tend God’s shoots of green growth around us.

Genesis 2:4-7Here is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. On the day when Adonai, God, made earth and heaven, there was as yet no wild bush on the earth, and no wild plant had as yet sprung up; for Adonai, God, had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no one to cultivate the ground. Rather, a mist went up from the earth which watered the entire surface of the ground.Then Adonai, God, formed a person from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being.

We will go on to talk of gardens on the way to Easter – thriving, healthy, withering; magnificent trees, tenacious seeds.

But Lent doesn’t start in lush Eden – it starts in the wilderness. Our first task of resistance is to believe it’s essential on the path to the resurrection garden. Jesus did not preach the kingdom of God fortified by a sojourn in a glorious fruitful garden; he had the audacity to preach it fresh from stony uncomfortable wilderness.